Better Together Through HebrewsSampel

Sprinkled Hearts, Clean Consciences

Many of us adults don’t believe in words like temptation anymore. Now, we say things like “I have a weakness for . . .” or “This is just my guilty pleasure,” as if these are excuses that permit us to engage in behaviors that when we were younger would have been deemed bad. The problem is that weaknesses can turn into habits. And guilty pleasures can turn into addictions. What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. And what happened on the business trip always comes home with us. These decisions impact our relationships, they cause us extreme guilt, and more often than not they cause us to try to hide. Usually when we ignore “trouble”—it finds us.

In the classic short story from Edgar Allen Poe “The Tale-Tell Heart,” we read of a man who took the life of his friend only to bury him beneath the house. The guilt he felt began to manifest itself in the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floor of his house. Could he still be alive? Could his heart be this loud? Could others hear it? Of course not, but the secret he kept was a noise that could not be drowned out with the life he tried to live. He eventually turned himself in to stop the madness. Why is it the secrets we try so hard to keep are the ones we most desperately need someone to help us carry?

Jesus’ brother James writes a letter to a group of Jesus followers telling them how to endure suffering and persecution as well as how to live in unity with each other. We now know this letter as the book of James, and some of our most quoted material is found in this letter. Toward the end of it he gives some shocking advice: 

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

James 5:16 NIV

We often push back on that with this loophole: “Can’t I just confess my sin to Jesus? After all 1 John 1:9 says, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’” (NIV).

Most of us are tempted to suppress whatever our issues are and assume no one else would ever understand. But, as James says elsewhere, the root of our sin is our evil desires, and these desires entice us and then drag us away (1:14). The nature of temptation is to separate us from one another, and ultimately separate us from God. It is then that sin happens. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. 

The sin is not in the temptation; it is in the acting upon it. And in between temptation and sin is isolation. If our temptation, which is unique and normal to have as human beings, drives us away from other human beings, could the cure be to run toward community? What if we learned some new habits with our temptations? If confession brings healing, and we need healing, what habits might help us share our temptations, and even carry the load for each other?

The author of Hebrews has another take on this:

Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:21–22 NRSV

It takes faith to admit you’re sinful, but it takes a lot more faith to admit how you are sinful to someone else, especially if that is someone against whom you are sinful. However, through Jesus, our high priest, we can do this.

Earlier in the letter, the author says this about Jesus being the high priest:

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:14–15 NRSV

When we confess to one another and share our temptations, desires, and sins, we are confessing to Jesus, too, because we all make up the body of Christ. This brings a whole new meaning to “coming clean” doesn’t it? Evil feeds off of secrets kept in the darkness, but confession brings things to light. And not so much with shame, but with love. Love does not cover up; love exposes and shines light into things that were once dark. However, this only happens in a community with the courage to confess and the grace to wash clean one another’s wrongdoings.